Organosilane self-assembled monolayers can be used to functionalize the surface of a substrate. Often times, however, monolayer functional ligands interact strongly with each other or with the underlying substrate, causing the silane molecules to “bend over” and/or form defects. As a result, surface sites adjacent to the existing anchored silane molecules can be blocked, which prevents fully dense monolayer coverage. Furthermore, the undesirable interactions can reduce the performance of the material by limiting the functional ligand's ability to bind an analyte. Thus, there is a need for engineered, self-assembled monolayers, and methods for making the same, wherein attenuation of the materials's functionality due to ligand-ligand and/or ligand-substrate interactions is minimized.